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- [00:01]
A
So we now have an American university in the heart of the country, Washington, D.C. saying we're going to have our campus security unmasked. Critics of the Chinese government, anyone involved in this should have had an alarm going off in their head, like, what are we doing here? Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.
- [00:24]
B
You're listening to so to Speak, the free speech podcast brought to you by fire, the foundation for individual Rights and Expression. All right, folks, welcome back to so to Speak, the free speech podcast, where every other week we take an uncensored look at the world of free expression through the law, philosophy, and stories that define your right to free speech. I am, as always, your host, Nico Perino. Today we are having another book conversation, and I am overjoyed to be joined by FIRE Senior Scholar for Global Expression, Sarah McLaughlin. She just published this book, Authoritarians in the how the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech. Available wherever fine books are sold. Sarah, welcome onto the show.
- [01:09]
A
Thanks for having me.
- [01:09]
B
Nico, I have to ask, and I don't think I've asked you this off air.
- [01:14]
A
Okay.
- [01:14]
B
How is it writing a book? I mean, is it. Was it as grueling for you as it is for me at the moment?
- [01:20]
A
You know, I found ultimately that having to go back and start editing the things you wrote was actually a more painful process.
- [01:28]
B
I'm not even at that process yet, so don't get ready.
- [01:31]
A
Pain comes soon. No, I enjoyed it. I've been steeped in these issues for so long that it was not as difficult as I expected the writing to be. But as I mentioned, having to edit what I wrote through a first pass was more difficult.
- [01:51]
B
Yeah, you mentioned you've been steeped in these issues. How did you first come to confront the issue of globalized censorship?
- [02:01]
A
Well, so I've been at FIRE for a long time. I think this week actually might be 13 years.
- [02:08]
B
Yeah. You and I are kind of on the same timeline. You started as a Drexel co op, right?
- [02:12]
A
I did, yeah. In 2012.
- [02:14]
B
Yeah. That's when I started full time.
- [02:15]
A
Yeah. So a lot's happened. But. So when I started, after I graduated, I came on to our campus rights program. So I was doing FIRE as bread and butter. Cases of working with students and professors who were fired for a tweet, for a protest, for teaching a book someone didn't like holding a sign. The basic kind of cases that we see. And there's a number of topics that we're very accustomed to seeing at the root of fires, abortion, race, gender, you Know the standard things that create controversy.
- [02:53]
B
In culture war stuff? Yeah.
- [02:55]
A
Often those things are very common. But what I was noticing over time, the longer I was doing this work, was that there were actually some other political issues that I was noticing were creating a censorship issue on campus and that weren't traditional American flashpoints. You know, they weren't guns or abortion. It was actually foreign government's political issues, specifically the Chinese government's issues, and how it was affecting what professors could teach and what students could say, sometimes in really meaningful, deep ways.
- [03:31]
B
How would China dictate what could or couldn't be said on an American college campus? It just doesn't make sense.
- [03:38]
A
It doesn't compute, right? Yeah, well, there's actually. There's a lot of different ways. So one of the ways that I talk about a lot in the book is, is the direct threats to students from China, so international students who come here and who think, you know what? Oh, man, it's the first time in my life I'm going to speak my mind, I'm going to read this book, I'm going to hold this sign in the quad. And they find that they've left China, they've left home, but the Chinese government hasn't really left them. And so they get here and turns out they're still being surveilled, they're still being watched. And not only are they at risk, perhaps for legal recourse when they return home for prison, but also their families are at risk, and their families are kind of used. They're used against them to try to punish them. Like something bad might happen to your mom if you don't shut up.
- [04:30]
B
Does that actually happen? Have you seen reports of that?
- [04:32]
A
Yeah. So I've spoken directly with students who have been contacted by their families who say police just visited. They showed us what you were tweeting. They said, if you don't stop, there's going to be trouble. Sometimes they receive multiple visits from party members, from police, from security officials, and the threat's very clear. If you don't do something, your family's going to suffer, or if you do something, your family is going to suffer. And, you know, I think for a lot of people, there's this idea that I'm willing to put myself out there to put myself at risk, but am I really willing to put people who have no choice in this matter at risk, too? And that's why it's such an effective strategy, because it uses the people you love against you. And it's tragic to set the scene.
- [05:19]
B
Here I believe you have some statistics in the book that talk about the percentage of international students in America. Like, I think I was looking amidst all this Harvard controversy, something like 27% of their student body is international, and a large portion of that is Chinese as well. Is that right?
- [05:36]
A
Yeah. So it really varies by campus. In the grand scheme of things, international students are a fairly small percentage. I'm not sure exactly what the numbers are. There are a lot of reasons why that's fluctuating right now. In the past few years, Covid created a lot of difficulties for international travel, but also there have been a lot of threats from the Trump administration that they're going to limit international student access to the country. So whether students will be fully allowed here, whether they will lose interest is sort of up for debate. But to give a very long answer to that question, at their peak, There were probably 300,000 international students from China here in the U.S. but there's millions of international students from China that travel all around the world and are part of higher education systems globally.
- [06:21]
B
And China is a main character in your book because it is such a populous country. And also, though its system of repression or censorship in America is more robust and systematic than some of these other. So how, with these threats lingering, how are they actually effectuated on campus? Are there American university administrators who are playing ball with the Chinese government?
- [06:48]
A
Yes. And so there's a couple different issues in play here. One is the extent to which government officials have made clear and direct demands on universities to censorship.
- [07:01]
B
Chinese government officials.
- [07:02]
A
Chinese government officials, we do need to clarify that these days. So there is the question of that. And that can come in the form of Chinese consulates who send a letter to universities saying, boy, I saw that you invited the Dalai Lama to speak. Are you sure you wanted to have done that? That doesn't seem wise.
- [07:23]
B
The Dalai Lama and the Chinese Communist Party, they don't get along?
- [07:26]
A
Historically, no. And, you know, that's been continuing. And what's sort of fascinating is how long the Chinese government will keep up these censorship campaigns against their targets. I mean, obviously, the issues with Tibet are ongoing, but they are just as energetic about censoring speech about Tiananmen, for example, even though that's decades past, they still will not allow people to talk about or learn what happened. So they're really quite committed to keeping up the censorship around issues the Chinese government considers sensitive. But yes. So there's the Chinese government demanding through its consulates, that universities act. In some cases, Confucius Institutes have been used, which ultimately are connected to the Chinese government. I can give a longer explanation.
- [08:17]
B
Well, yeah, why don't you unpack what Confucius Institutes are? They used to be more prevalent on college campuses than they are now. There's been some kind of pressures from government officials here in the United States to unwind those. And that's happened a bit, but for a while there, they're a pretty significant vehicle for some of the censorship.
- [08:35]
A
Yeah, they are almost gone. But I want to preface that by saying just because Confucius Institutes have gone doesn't mean that the underlying relationships between American universities and Chinese universities have changed, Disappeared. Not at all. But Confucius Institutes are essentially programs managed by the Chinese government, and they coordinate ties between an American university or a different foreign university and a Chinese university. And they provide some funding, usually 200 grand, maybe some teaching materials, teaching staff, things like that. And so they come here and the nice way to explain it is that they're intended to be institutes that offer education, cultural programming, language education, things like that. And they do that. But they've also done things like tell universities that if they don't disinvite a speaker that the Chinese government doesn't like, then they'll cancel the partnership and that there'll be some response or retaliation on the part of the Chinese government. That happens sporadically. I don't, you know, think that every Confucius Institute was doing this, but enough for doing it that it's clear that the relationship alone did create the risk of academic freedom violations, for sure.
- [09:57]
B
And I want to talk about one example that really struck me, which was a February 2022 campaign to put up some anonymous posters around George Washington University's campus. They were ostensibly Olympic themed protest posters, but when he got close to them, they highlighted Chinese human rights abuses. And initially, the George Washington University administration did not cover itself in glory from a free speech perspective in responding these. Yeah. So talk. If you can use this case at first, tell us a little bit more about it, but also kind of use it to unpack some of the themes from your book and some of the challenges that American universities have to face given partnerships and frankly, just like cultural sensitivity concerns with an international student body.
- [10:48]
A
Yeah. So what's interesting about the George Washington case is that some of what I talk about in the book is the Chinese government directly or indirectly encouraging or demanding censorship on the part of universities. But another part of that story is how a lot of this dispute has been picked up by students and how students are sometimes the main driver of demands for censorship of are These American students, it's a mix. But the primary leader in this has been chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association. And these student groups are allowed to form around shared backgrounds, culture, values and FIRE has long defended students rights. To do this and even call for censorship, and even call for censorship, you have a right to do that, even if we think it's illiberal or a bad idea. But there's been a lot of clear involvement on the part of CSSA chapters to appeal to university administrators to try to dictate university programming to their preferences and sensitivities. And that's what we saw at gw. So what happened there was after those posters went up and they were anonymously put up in a building at the time, we didn't know who, which becomes an important part of the question. But the CSSA and another student group, I believe it's the Chinese Cultural association, complained to GW's administration and they said these posters are hurtful, offensive, the university needs to act.
- [12:24]
B
What did they depict again?
- [12:26]
A
So they depicted a series of human rights issues in China and sort of like nameless representatives of China's Olympic team maybe participating in them. You know, just meant to be a representative of the Chinese government. So abuse of Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hong Kongers. And there was also one that people especially complained about that alluded to the Chinese government's cover up of COVID after the COVID pandemic started. And so students went to GW's administration and they said, you have to do something. And they got their wish. GW's president at the time, he responded and he said that he was personally offended by those posters, which was very interesting thing.
- [13:11]
B
Personally offended by what exactly?
- [13:14]
A
That's a good question.
- [13:18]
B
I almost ask it seriously. Is he saying these human rights abuses don't exist or were they depicted in a way that he thought was like racist or.
- [13:28]
A
Well, so that's the thing. I think universities want to be seen as being proactive against hate and offense and bias on campus. And it can lead them into saying things that if you step back for.
- [13:41]
B
A moment, look patently absurd, look really.
- [13:44]
A
Ridiculous, like what personally offended you about posters describing China's human rights issues? And so he said he was personally offended. Then he said he was ordering the posters to be taken down, but he didn't stop there. He also said he was going to have the university conduct an investigation to see who had posted them. So we now have an American university in the heart of the country, Washington D.C. saying we're going to have our campus security unmask critics of the Chinese government. Anyone involved in this should have had an alarm going off in their head, like, what are we doing here? Unfortunately, that alarm did not go off in their heads until people like fire legislators said, wait, hold on, you're doing what? And so fortunately, President Reiten, he said, you know what? I made a mistake. And that's good. We don't want to put people in a position where they feel like they have to dig in even further and can't admit they made a mistake.
- [14:50]
B
We should be able to accept people's apologies.
- [14:53]
A
But. But, you know, I do want to investigate a little bit why that was his first response, why he didn't think to say GW has free speech commitments. It doesn't matter whether or not I'm personally offended by the posters, because campus speech policies are not dictated on the whims of subjective ideas of offense. But that's not what he did. And, you know, at the time when I was first writing about this, when it was still open to investigation on the university's part, I pointed out there is a good chance here that the people who posted these images were international students from China and Hong Kong. And if you open an investigation and create a disciplinary record for them, you are creating a very real risk that when they return home, they're going to go to prison for this. Because it's going. This is not something that's going to just be left behind. It will follow them. So, you know, I do want to say it's good that the university realized it made a mistake, but I also do want them to realize the scope of what they had almost done to these students.
- [15:59]
B
I don't think many Americans realize just how repressive and sensorial some of these foreign countries can be. So they think someone posts something and maybe insensitive, and we're going to punish them and they're like, well, that's it. But it's really not well.
- [16:12]
A
And I think sometimes people look at free speech issues on campus and they say, oh, whatever. So a student gets a black mark on their disciplinary record, they'll get over it. I mean, that's really not the case for the students in question here. I don't agree that we should look so lightly at this happening to American students either. But it's also very real risk that having that record would send someone to jail in very severe conditions, perhaps for a long time. And for universities to welcome international students to be very happy to take their oftentimes higher than their American peers. Tuition dollars and then be so reckless and careless about their rights. That's something that I find really frustrating.
- [16:52]
B
Well, who were the students who posted it?
- [16:54]
A
Ultimately, some of them were international students from China and Hong Kong. I interviewed them. I was able to get in touch with them in the aftermath. And they were really aggrieved, understandably, by what happened because they felt that their university was not only disregarding their rights, but was also wading into things that they didn't understand in ways that were very, you know, almost seemed to support the Chinese government's position on things without thinking it through. Because they just took the CSSA's complaints, for example, as representative of what Chinese students on campus felt about these posters. And they didn't like that. The university was kind of weighing in to suggest, yes, those posters were offensive. And one of the things that was most interesting to me was one of the students I spoke to, he told me that his father had actually been at Tiananmen, had been a protester, a student protester there. And he didn't tell his dad about what he was doing at GW because he didn't want to put his dad at risk of retaliation like some other family members of international students have been. And I thought that was really tragic. One of the small, and maybe not seen or paid attention to tragic examples of what censorship does to families, where it would probably be really meaningful for him to be able to discuss that with his dad, but he didn't want to put him in danger.
- [18:24]
B
We've mentioned Covid a couple times here. How did the COVID years change these considerations for international students on campus? Classes are being held online, often via Zoom. There's more of a digital footprint as to what these students do or say in their class than there was prior to that. If you're taking international politics or history course and you're looking at China or any of these other countries, and what you say can get back to the Chinese government, presumably that would chill some of what these students say. Has that been something that professors and administrators have considered, have tried to address in one way or another?
- [19:06]
A
It's something I definitely saw a response to from professors who teach issues that are particularly sensitive to the Chinese government. I did not see much of a response from university administrations, and I think there's probably a few reasons why. One of them being, if you acknowledge that the Chinese government creates risks to your students, it gets a little bit harder to justify having perhaps a satellite campus in that exact country. But getting back to the question here, what was happening during COVID was. So, as I mentioned, students have already been fearful that some kind of digital trail is going to follow them and create legal risk for them. But when you're doing everything online, that concern is magnified significantly and you can't really control it. You can't not have a digital trail because that was for, I don't know, a year, year and a half. Basically everything we did was especially expressive wise was kind of on the Internet and so they were fearful of that. And then a lot of these students weren't even on campus. Some of them were trapped in other countries at home because of travel restrictions. So you might be in the position where you're taking a class via Zoom, which is going to be heavily surveilled in China, perhaps, and you're reading and teaching material that is not legal in your country. So, yeah, that created a lot of risk. And I think for the most part, professors responded really thoughtfully and well to it. You know, kind of the dual position of we're not going to trade away our rights, we're not going to accept limits on what we teach, but we're also going to be conscientious of the rapidly evolving situation our students are in and at least think of ways to provide anonymity or to contribute to class in a non group discussion over Zoom, so you don't have to fear that your peers will be filming you and what you say. And so I think they did a good job with that. But one thing that I also talk about in the book that was happening, the worst timing that you can have was that Hong Kong passed a National security law in 2020 just after everything went online. And the law is explicitly written to apply to anyone and everyone around the world at any time. So right now, you and I could be violating Hong Kong's National Security Law, even though we're not citizens and aren't there. And so with everything being done online, there was a lot of heightened fear, not just among students, but also among professors, that they were maybe going to be violating this law by talking about Hong Kong, and that should they travel back to Hong Kong or China, they might face some legal repercussions or they might not even be allowed to travel back there.
- [21:53]
B
You talk about sensitivity exploitation in your book and you talk about a 2019 incident involving then Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey, who tweeted an image speaking of Hong Kong that said, fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong. And there was some backlash to this from figures including, yeah, including LeBron James, who responded by saying that he could have harmed people not only financially but physically, emotionally, spiritually. You had the Chinese consulate in Houston which stated, we have lodged representative and expressed strong dissatisfaction with the Houston Rockets and urged the latter to correct the error and take immediate concrete measures to eliminate the adverse impact. I'm also thinking of some cases that we worked on at FIRE where you had students or student groups. One case involving Emerson College where during COVID they handed out stickers with the Gen Z slaying China. Kind of, Susan, a reference to Covid and the Chinese government and the Wuhan lab theory, which now some American intelligence agencies thinks likely. But in that case, you had the president of the university punish the student group for handing out these stickers and saying that they were representing anti Asian hate and bias. I think we also had a case involving a professor who wrote on his blog about the lab like theory that anyone who didn't believe it was swallowing a bunch of Chinese cock swaddle and he was accused of being racist. So you have these allegations of racism or to use LeBron James language, harming people emotionally and spiritually as a way to kind of pressure them to shut up. And I think about this as an American. Yeah, I live in America and we live in a representative democracy. So the government speaks to me in some ways. But like, I wouldn't think it'd be racist to criticize the Chinese government. There seems to be almost kind of a conflation that's almost purposely being made in order to shut people up from criticizing the Chinese government. Conflation between the Chinese people and their government.
- [24:05]
A
Yeah. And I think it's taking advantage of this desire to be seen as responsive to hate and hurt and offense. And it's really bad faith subversion of that notion to say, okay, if you're going to try to fight back and not allow hate on this campus. Well, I find this Uyghur speaker to be very hateful. And there's actually a case at McMaster University in Canada where CSSA there said that it was violating the university's hate speech policy for students to invite a Uyghur speaker to talk about her experience being victimized by the Chinese government. And so it's using these notions of hate and hurt and harm to say, okay, well that's what I feel when you say these things about the Chinese government. And it's really offensive to me as a student and I'm a paying student and I deserve to have an environment where I don't experience that here. And so it's using that notion of insensitivity to say, okay, well, I find these speakers, Tibetans and Uyghurs, insensitive to me.
- [25:15]
B
We've talked a lot about China during this conversation and with good reason. Again, they have a large population of students who come here to study. They're also one of the world powers, of course. And we've also talked about American college campuses here in the United States. But there are also situations where American colleges set up satellites in some of these foreign countries. And that has created free speech and academic freedom problems when you try and import or export American freedom to countries that don't have the same standards, to put it mildly for freedom. Can you talk about maybe the satellite campuses in Qatar? I know we have Georgetown University was the Northwestern one, also Northwestern as well. Northwestern. The Qatar examples, I think, really bring some of these challenges to light.
- [26:10]
A
Yeah. So what's really interesting about these campuses is I think universities have been, to be honest, perhaps straight out lying about what they can actually provide. And so they have been very clear sometimes in front of Congress saying, we are providing an American style education, we are bringing our values and our policies and we are creating little pockets of freedom abroad. And so, you know, we're going to stand by our values there. And the evidence is clear they have very obviously not stood by those values when challenged. And the Qatari campuses are a perfect example because universities have been put in this position where they've been forced to admit, okay, we have our values as long as they're in accordance with Qatari law.
- [27:02]
B
Yeah. At Georgetown University in 2018, they wanted to host a debate on the Qatari campus with a motion that said this House believes that major religions should portray God as a woman. What happened next?
- [27:15]
A
That event did not go on. What was interesting is Georgetown Guq used an excuse that we've seen a lot here in the US Kind of amorphous security concerns or they didn't have the proper permits. Things we've seen here a lot that very conveniently happen to pop up when.
- [27:34]
B
There'S a controversial censorship by technicality.
- [27:38]
A
Yeah. And so I wrote about it and I said, Georgetown, are you sure that there was a permitting or policy issue and it wasn't just because Qatar has a blasphemy law where you can be imprisoned for. For expressing religious views that go against the prevailing government orthodoxy or doctrine? Yeah. And Georgetown then admitted Georgetown has free expression in Qatar as long as it's in accordance with Qatari law. And that to me is a pretty big asterisk. Blasphemy law is Quite a cutout from a free speech law.
- [28:14]
B
It's like the original censorship, right?
- [28:16]
A
It's about as basic as it gets. Saying you can't see, say what the state doesn't like about God. But that's a perfect example of what's happening. Something similar happened at Northwestern's Qatar campus where they had invited a speaker who was gay and he was going to speak. And they said, oh, we had to cancel this for security concerns, we'll host it at our home campus in the US Instead. And if you look no further, you think, oh, well, that's nice. They're still making sure the event goes forward and they're not going to let security threats take it down. But that's not what happened. They were immediately undermined by the Qatar foundation, which is a state linked body and which is the partner for all of these American campuses that open up there. It coordinates and it's their partner there. And they said, no, that isn't what happened. This event was canceled because I think their words were, it patently did not correlate with Qatari law and social custom. And so Northwestern was kind of thrown under the bus because they were trying to give an excuse that didn't suggest they were allowing Qatari law to dictate what happens on the campus. And then their state partner said, yeah, that's what happened. We did that.
- [29:29]
B
But at a certain sense you want these sort of cultural exchanges, right? Like you want to have these programs overseas is the problem that you have these program overseas and these universities are essentially lying.
- [29:42]
A
Yes. So I think that at the base of this, it's a lack of transparency and honesty about what a university can actually provide. Because they want to be very clear, they want to give you these flowery statements about their values, but they also want to accept the very large financial opportunities that come with moving abroad to the Gulf states, for example. Yes, ultimately I think transparency is the issue, but I also think it's worth asking if universities should be opening up campuses in countries where they're not even willing to say quite clearly what the law is on the ground. That, to me is a pretty obvious problem.
- [30:26]
B
You suggested there was some new development with Northwestern.
- [30:28]
A
Yeah, so recently they just released a congressional interview of the outgoing president of Northwestern and they explicitly asked him, does Qatar, does the Qatar campus have free speech? And he said, yes, we have. Our policies and principles apply there. And I said, okay, well what about Qatari's censorship law? And then he immediately said, oh, well, I don't know, I'm not a legal expert. So they're very clear when you're talking at 30,000ft. Yes, our values, our principles. And then when you say, okay, well, what about the blasphemy law? Well, that's very complicated.
- [31:06]
B
So in this current moment, it's interesting to talk about these subjects. You had mentioned that these satellite campuses are pockets of freedom, often in countries that are more repressive, again, to say the least, than America has been historically. But right now, America itself is not really a pocket of freedom for these international students. You have Ramessa Ozturk, right, Turkish student who comes here, writes an op ed about the Israeli Palestinian conflict and her university's investments, and she gets snatched off the street by ICE agents in plain clothes. You have Mahmoud Khalil, who took part or negotiated on behalf of these protesters at Columbia University similarly detained by ice. The university are put in a tough position. And the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has made it more or less really clear that he has broad based authority to target people, even for ideologically based reasons.
- [32:07]
A
Yeah, they've used the term anti American ideologies, which I bet you and I have a different idea of what anti American is. I'm sure Marco Rubio and I have a different idea of what anti American means. It's very broad and it's.
- [32:19]
B
Well, right now primarily it seems to be criticism of Israel is also anti American. And we're representing the Stanford Daily Publishing Corp, the student newspaper for Stanford, along with some other plaintiffs and a challenge to some of these provisions that Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, is using to pursue ideologically based deportations. But one of the reasons we're representing Stanford Daily is because they have international students who used to write and edit for the paper who are now afraid to do so because some of the stories that they write or edit might be viewed by the administration as being anti American or some other sort of crosswise direction with the administration. So now you have international students who are not self censoring because of what their home country might be seeing them do, but they're self censoring because of fear of the American government coming in and torpedoing their American education, which presumably they were very excited to get when they arrived here. Is there anything else to say on that? I guess.
- [33:21]
A
Well, you know, this. What's happened in the past six months or so has been really, really tragic from my point of view, because part of the reason why I wrote this book is because I do actually believe there's incredible value in offering the American style freedoms and education to international students. I think there's something so beautiful, and it's maybe one of the best things about America, the idea that someone can come here and take a deep breath and say, wow, for the first time, I can say what I think. I love the idea.
- [33:52]
B
Breathe the air of freedom. Yes.
- [33:54]
A
That coming here could be, you know, life changing for someone the first time that they get to explore not just different political views, but also get to better understand themselves just through being able to encounter and interact with different ideas. And so the idea that we are just willing to torch that I think is tragic, you know, for these students, for the rest of the world, but also for us, because I think we lose things too when we silence students who I think we have a lot to learn from as well. And what's also making it difficult is it's getting a lot harder to find ways to protect these students. I mean, what fire's doing with this lawsuit is incredibly important because it's getting hard for me to help these students better understand how to protect themselves when they feel like the threats are coming from every side. And there was a point at which they might have actually looked to the federal government as a bulwark. Yeah, as a bulwark and perhaps a way to combat the transnational repression they're facing here in the United States. But I can't imagine that a lot of students will feel safe doing that because they'll worry, oh boy, what if they don't like my position on Ukraine or Israel? And they won't just not help me, but they might actually actively target me too.
- [35:12]
B
Or even if this administration doesn't, there'll be a future administration that might have a different perspective on some of these issues.
- [35:17]
A
Yeah. I mean, we know very well here at FIRE that these are Pandora's boxes. They are not. When you open it, crazy things can happen.
- [35:26]
B
Was there anything you learned writing this book that you were surprised by? Some of the conversations it seemed like you had with the international students? Just kind of inspiring by their bravery.
- [35:36]
A
Yeah. Well, I think one thing that I've been thinking about a lot lately as we have been dealing with a lot of issues that I think you could perhaps put under the umbrella of cowardice here in the US when it comes to people who could make stands for their rights and are choosing not to for self serving reasons because it's financially the smart thing to do, or abc or it's too much work or the political questions at play. These are people who are, for the most part, not even willing to risk a little bit of money. Or power. And the students I was speaking to have really put everything on the line. And so the idea that we have people coming here and are willing to do everything just to be able to hold a sign saying what they think. And we have some of the richest people, most powerful people in the country, who aren't even willing to risk a little bit of time and money to stand up for themselves. I think it should be a little of a shameful lesson for some.
- [36:48]
B
We have a recurring segment here. I don't know if you saw this in the outline. Do you have a free speech literature recommendation besides your book? Obviously.
- [36:59]
A
I just finished reading, I think it was called John Brown Abolitionist by David Reynolds. And obviously I knew that there was a lot of censorship. The book was largely about John Brown, of course, but it also talked about the abolitionist movement in the US more broadly in the 19th century. And I was consistently taken aback by how severe the censorship was of basic political expression advocating abolition. I was really floored at times.
- [37:30]
B
There was a line in Jakob Mushengamma's History of Free Speech book that floored me where he said, I think it was a Georgia law, made it punishable by potentially death to distribute abolitionist literature in that state.
- [37:46]
A
And it was in states all across the country, new territories. And it wasn't just obviously horrific laws, which are the most concerning part, but also mob violence, people who would break into abolitionist presses and throw all of their printing material into the river. And the extent to which legal and social was that.
- [38:07]
B
Elijah Lovejoy was one of them. I know Ida B. Wells ran Someday. Yeah.
- [38:11]
A
But the extent to which that was taking place, I knew it happened. But reading about it all at once together, I have to check that out. Really, really disturbed me.
- [38:23]
B
What about Hero or Inspiration?
- [38:25]
A
Well, I have been obviously reading a lot of Frederick Douglass lately.
- [38:29]
B
Yeah. Well, when you said the mobs coming in and breaking up meetings and presses, I thought of his plea for free speech In Boston, the 1860 essay After a pro slavery mob broke up his abolitionist meeting.
- [38:38]
A
Yeah. And I was reading recently about. He was going to give one speech. It might have been about the Emancipation Proclamation, I can't remember. But he had to physically fight people to get to the podium because of how many people were descending on him to try to harm him, to make sure he couldn't get there. It's incredible the extent to which Frederick Douglass put his life, everything on the line just to go up there and make the case for understanding that very basic American values supported abolition.
- [39:11]
B
Well, Sarah McLachlan, the book is Authoritarians in the how the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech, available now. Sarah, thanks for coming on the show.
- [39:21]
A
Thank you, Nico.
- [39:22]
B
I am Nico Perino and this podcast is recorded and edited by a rotating roster of my Fire colleagues, including Sam Lee, who also produces the podcast podcast. To learn more about so to Speak, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel or substack page, both of which feature video versions of this conversation. We're also on X, which you can find by searching for the handle Free Speech Talk, and you can send feedback to so to speak@the fire.org Again, that is so to speak@the fire.org if you enjoy this episode, please leave us a review. We take reviews on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. They help us attract new listeners to the show. And until next time, thanks again for listening.